Book Review: Space Marine Battles - Rynn's World

Image from Black Library posted under Fair Usage

Rynn's World is one of those terms that has hung around the 40k setting like a misasmal memory of the earliest days when squats roamed the universe and marines were no taller than the average burly man down the pub. Perhaps the most iconic of the covers that ever graced the Warhammer 40k rulebook, the image of the Crimson Fists in their heroic last stand against the full weight of an orc Waaargh (typing that feels so stupid) should have made for one of those marine titles that makes a fan eager with anticipation.

So perhaps I shouldn't have been suprised to find that this one would suffer from the cardboard marine syndrome that seems to affect most of the Black Library novels on the subject not handled by the more reliable authors in their stable. When done well, a marine novel excellently juxtaposes the mythic nature of the astartes in the eyes of common men and the reality of the god-like but often flawed beings inside the powered armour. When done badly you have a plodding tome in which the humans are either fawning or pathetic and the marines either rabid killers or indecicive types more given to self-doubt and contenplation than heroics.

Allessio Cortez and Pedro Cantor fall into each of these roles respectively as the orcs make amazingly short work of their homeworld and chapter; the former champs at the bit and the latter worries about what will become of them all. The reader is left wondering at the idea that these two are such close friends when they seem so starkly different and opposed. Meanwhile the pitiful humans dash around at their feet and generally get in the way while the orcs just want to have a laugh and kill everything twice over.

The shame is that the opening parts of the novel detailling the splendor of the Fists' fortress stronghold and the politics of the captains vying for glory started things out quite well. But then everything goes boom and the reader is left with a small band of marines trailing after Cantor and Cortez through the wilderness and wrestling with the problem of getting the job done or messing about with puny mortal survivors along the way. This resembeld far too closely the terrible tradition in modern fantasy for long and boring treks through the wilds to fill the space and pad out the book.

Even when reuinted with the remnants of the chapter, Cantor and his band still fail to really come alive as they track down the nasty orc warlord responsible for the whole mess. The baffling climax of the story comes when the showdown between Cantor and the orc Boss, who seems awfully keen on proving that he's tougher and nastier than the marine Chapter Master, ends when the orc cuts and runs by jumping into a waiting helecopter in front of his own troops. Great way to show you're the hardest greenskin in the galaxy: by basically turning tail and admitting defeat!

By the standards of the average Black Library novel, Rynn's World is just that: average. While I was not impressed by the standard of the writing, there's nothing to stop someone else with less exacting standards getting a kick out of the generous amounts of greenskin blood shed here. But it seemed to me that this title was pretty lightweight, printed in very large type and hyped up to be more than it was. Even the maps included to show the locationn of the events in the text were pretty bland and lacking in detail.

Not the worst book I ever read, but far from the best the Black Library has to offer.

Psychic Warfare: Librarians Part 2 - The Warhammer 40K Era

As with most of the marine range, the librarians really started to come into their own in the nineties when standard armour patterns, sculpting scales and iconography allowed the miniatures to excell in individual style whilst fitting in alongside the rest of the marine range.

This was the first librarian that I ever owned and back then, due to the fact that I was using the same colour for their armour as that of the standard marines, I decided to mark them out by painting their hair with peroxide stripes running through it. When I recently came to review the miniatures that I had and decided on new colour schemes for them, needless to say that seemed bloody stupid and it went into the ideas bin.

A fairly simple paint job here that highlights the basic ideas behind the scheme that I use for all my librarians. The armour painted with Mordian Blue provides a flat background to allow the detailling of the helmets and other metallic elements to stand out.

Another fairly standard librarian that shows the concept of the helmet and psychic hood that are meant to echo the use of a golden halo on religious icons. In retrospect I would probably snip off the spike on the top of this guy's poweraxe...seems, I don't know, too pointy to me.

The psychic hoods on most of these librarians featured an icon of some kind, usually an aguila or horned skull. But that bugged me for some reason, reminding me of expensive cars sporting big showy badges and too much bling. So they went the way of the peoxide stripes so that more attention is centred around the helmets.

This is probably one of the librarians that I'm most happy with due to the combination of the open-faced helmet and the F***ING wierd scrollwork on his staff. Again I think that removing the aguila from the top of the psychic hood makes the miniature more balanced rather than a mad riot of detail that detracts from the overall feel of the character.

What's on the boil?

Sometimes I feel like the old RTB01 marines look at the side of their modern counterparts: battered, confused and always bending down slightly as if in need of a toilet stop. At the moment I'm an agonising one miniture away from having everything I need ready to put up a special post that I've been working on regarding Space Crusade and at the same time suffering from some kind of rather vile stomach bug that means I'm never more than dashing distance from the toilet.

In other news it seems as though Forge Wolrd have responded to the fact that there are so many people out there making Pre Heresy conversions and companies offering parts for "Steam Knights" and the like, that there's money to be made. To this end they are about to crap out a pretty impressive looking series of marine parts featuring earlier mark power armout components and weapons styled after the original RT era bolters and heavy weapons.

Seems as though there's still some love for the classic marines in the GW collective consciousness that goes beyond a paltry amount of bits on the standard tactical sprue after all. Of course the new parts are a more beefy version of the originals to be in keeping with the fact that modern marines are more like demigods than the rather more humble originals, but these more chunky versions certainly look nice.

I'll hopefully be able to post something more useful soon, but until then the toilet beckons.

Guardians of Faith: Chaplains Part 2 - The Warhammer 40K Era

For me the chaplains have always been one of the strongest elements of the space marine range and in the 90s the quality of the miniatures on offer just seemed to get better. I seem to modify alsmost all the miniatures that I paint and this one was no exception. I found him in an odds and sods box at a local game store with the limb that should have been holding his crozius chopped off. A chaos marine chainsword and a powerfist from a chaos terminator with the pointy bits filed down gave the miniature what I think is a very distinctive look and makes him my favourite of the dozen or so chaplains I have painted.

This is another chaplain deprived of his crozius, but this time on purpose. Around the time one of the previous incarnations of the Legion of the Damned was released, White Dwarf suggested a conversion with this chaplain replacing the crozius with a powersword to make a captain or hero for the mysterious band of warriors. I made the conversion, but never completed him in the LotD colours and he sat around in by collection until I recently stripped off the old paint job and decided that he would look best as a chaplain after all.

This was one of the more "conventional" chaplains that I painted. Pretty simple and uncomplicated apart from the addition of the waistcloth and a skull-themed backpack from a Dark Angels character. I was amazed at how adding just those two elements to the miniature added a great deal of personality and depth. Is there any chaplain model out there that couldn't benefit from more skulls? If so then I haven't seen it yet.

Random Marine: Master of the Fleet

For some perverse reason I found that I couldn't assemble any of the four miniatures in the spacemarine chaptermasters box with the original heads and instead replaced them with pretty standard helmeted heads instead. One reason for this is that I believe less is more and in the case of more elaborate miniatures the addition of a bare head can be too much. Adding a standard helmet tones down the whole and puts the attention on the miniature as a whole. Conversely I find that adding a bare head to a simpler model such as a sergeant makes the miniature more interesting and enhamces the otherwise standard nature of the other compenents.

Random Marine: Mid 90s Spacemarine Captain

One thing I think is a constant for the marines sculpted in the 90s is the fact that they seem to have a good balance of pose, wargear and pomp to them. Take this guy for example: he has a powersword and a stormbolter, a bulky combination of weapons for a marine in standard powerarmour. But the addition of the dramatic pose and the sweeping cloak balance this well.

Cowboy Techadepts: Techmarines Part 1 - Rogue Trader Era

Techmarines inhabit a strange world of split loyalties with one foot in the chapters of the Emperor's spacemaines and the other in the cult of the Machine God of Mars. As such I always thought of them as somewhat akin to a cowboy builder or electrician who can talk a good fight but that you secretly suspect might be in over his head and telling porkies about the job at hand. I'm sure that's not the case and that no techmarine has ever looked at a totalled landraider and sucked his teeth or commented that the previous work done on a rhino was that of a "right amatuer".

Seems to me that the issues surrounding the RT era apothecaries sculpting are non-existant with the techmarines. Their poses are good, the detail fine and the proportions just right. In addition the theme of massive tools and the shoulderpads in the form of talons on the right and exposed tech on the left are something that unfortunately (in my opinion) never carried over into later editions of the range.

With the techmarines I thought that it was important to keep away from effects such as bone and gold detailling and instead to make them seem more functional. Growing up in Sheffield I was surrounded by museums full of machinery from the industrial age and most of these towering engines seemed to have been painted a deep green, so it was a logical step to apply that same colour scheme to the techmarines. Also I feel an odd echo of the "Green Goddesses" the military fire engines used by the British army.

I have to admit that I was a little disappointed this guy didn't have the same kind of oversized tool as the others (I'm still hunting for the techmarine with the massive monkeywrench!), so I console myself with the idea that he's looking at his wristchron in exasperation. Perhaps he's waiting for a transport that's late or cursing the servitor that he sent down to the stores to get him a screwdriver the size of a garden rake.